


What Do You Get When You Cross a Matheson and a Monroe?

by BeaRyan



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Brotp, Comedy, F/M, King of Canada
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-06 01:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1839490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaRyan/pseuds/BeaRyan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You did not mess with Bass’ wife, child, or President and live.  The presumptuous son of a bitch, the self-proclaimed King of Canada, had done all three when he’d snatched a very pregnant Charlie.  Set approximately three years post-series.  A companion piece to This Is a Terrible Idea, but it should stand alone if you haven't read the other one.  Comedy, hopefully with feels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Do You Get When You Cross a Matheson and a Monroe?

Bass stopped trying to focus on the image bouncing in the lens of his shaking binoculars and closed his eyes. He concentrated on slowing his breathing and steadying his hand. The self-proclaimed King of Canada would be dead in less than 24 hours. You did not mess with Bass’ wife, child, or President and live. The presumptuous son of a bitch had done all three when he’d snatched a very pregnant Charlie in St. Armand, Vermont. He’d even had the nerve to fly a pirate flag as they’d ferried her across the Missisquoi Bay. 

Bass hadn’t even wanted her to go to that nowhere town, but Charlie had complained she hadn’t spent much time out in the Northeast Republic since he’d made her President. Reluctantly Bass had acknowledged that not a whole hell of a lot was likely to happen if she took a few boat rides around Lake Champlain, and they’d be able to put out news articles about her stops in New York, Vermont, and Quebec. Hooray for efficiency and looking like a President who cares. He’d written off her seasickness at first and ignored the fact that Jessica was among her entourage. Sure, Jess was technically a doctor, but she was also Charlie’s best friend. Why shouldn’t she come? 

Then came the night Charlie had bled a little after sex. Bass cursed himself for missing it at the time, but Charlie was so damn cool, so self-contained when she wanted to be, that he hadn’t thought anything of it. A man who wanted to stay happily married was careful never to admit he noticed the fluctuations of his wife’s menstrual cycle or weight. Sometimes she was friskier than others. Sometimes her boobs were a little bigger. These were good problems to have. Charlie had just gone to the bathroom for a minute and then stuck her head in the hall and said something to security. Thirty minutes later Jess was giving him a lecture on shallow versus deep sexual positions and vigor. Getting a rundown on how your sexlife should go from a girl you’d known since she was in pigtails hadn’t been awkward at all, no sir. Still neither Charlie nor Jess would say the word pregnant. They both knew about Shelly, knew the fear that twisted in his gut. Or at least they thought they did. 

No one, least of all Bass, ever spoke about the fact that Bass had started losing his grip on morality when he’d lost his first wife. Over the next ten years he’d buried a steady stream of friends as close as family as they’d fought to stabilize the Monroe Republic, and a little of himself had gone to the great hereafter with each of them. Then he’d met Charlie and she held him steady. He forced himself to act like a man who was worthy of her. For example, he was only going to slit the king’s throat. He wasn’t going to torture him. Much. Probably. 

He’d have to give the soon to be dethroned and disemboweled king one thing. He’d chosen a hell of a location. Point Jameson was literally the point of the peninsula. Surrounded by water on three sides with only a narrow and well-defended access point by land, no one was getting in or out unseen. Charlie, if not exactly on top of her due date then close enough to waddle as she moved towards it, wouldn’t be leaping to freedom over the pointed logs forming the palisade, and he had to rescue her first. She was somewhere in there, but he didn’t even know what it looked like past the wall. There was no vantage point high enough to see in. 

Bass moved back through the woods to his encampment. Fear wouldn’t slow him down, but he wouldn’t be foolhardy enough to go too quickly either. He’d get Charlie out safely, kill the king, and then head home so his baby could be born in a fortified city of his own choosing. 

________________________________________

The cove where Bass’ small fleet of attack boats was hidden had once been collection of luxury houses. Bass noted the multiple docks, abundant bunk space, and swimming pools that could easily be patched and turned to wells and vowed to make it prison colony once he’d killed the king. The king’s own fortification would become a military base. Just because the guy had been stupid enough to touch Charlie, it didn’t mean he’d made a poor choice of of places to set up shop. 

The cry came up from his lookout and Bass, sitting on the roof of the mansion he’d claimed, swung his binoculars to the direction called. The small sailboat approaching them flew a white flag and was moving quickly straight at them. It was either a decoy or a messenger. Either way, the king knew they were here. It would be a relief to get the action underway, but at the same time Charlie was now even more at risk. The boat quickly tied up and the sailor clumsily moved along the dock. He slouched, his uniform was dirty, and Bass hated him immediately. He decided to kill him as soon as he knew this schmuck wasn’t his key to Charlie. 

The enemy / loser humped his way up the hill while Bass shimmied down the drainpipe from the roof. Bass’ own troops, clean and pressed from head to toe, leveled their weapons on the approaching emissary. The man - Bass was even more disgusted to realize this was an adult old enough to be a senior officer if he wasn’t such a walking disaster - asked if he could reach into his pocket to get the message. Bass gave his consent, and the man reached into the stained depths of what passed for his uniform and withdrew a clumsily folded piece of paper. If it had been crisp and white when it had gone into his pocket, it wasn’t now. Bass considered shooting him just for being careless with his correspondence. This was not how civilized people did things, and these idiots had somehow managed to capture his wife. It was embarrassing. He wondered how they’d pulled it off and if she’d be running the entire place by the time he rescued her. 

Bass snatched the note from the messenger’s grubby fingers and began reading.

_Charlie’s in labor. Jess says she’s far enough along that it’s fine. Come now. You can bring two men. Charlie says not Michaels. ___

__Bass cursed his luck and his wife. He really wanted to bring Michaels, but he shouldn’t have been surprised. Charlie hated him. He was a less subtle version of Strausser. Bass nodded to Duncanson (Bass thought he could count on him) and Jeff (Charlie liked him) who quickly fell in behind him as he marched toward the messenger’s boat._ _

__“Can I pee first?” the messenger whined._ _

__“No,” Bass answered. “But I can tie it shut for you if you don’t get your ass on this boat right now.”_ _

__The man scurried aboard and quickly cast off from the dock. He fiddled with the engine, repeatedly failing to actually start it, while Duncanson and Jeff grabbed oars and began paddling. Bass stood in the bow of the boat and did his best impression of George Washington crossing the Delaware. He wondered if George had later stabbed any of the guys in his boat for sheer incompetence._ _

__They tied up at the king of Canada’s dock less than a half an hour later. Duncanson and Jeff had paddled the whole way. The messenger’s contribution had been limited to peeing out the back up the boat and making a joke about being upstream from the downstream. Bass grudgingly admitted that the fact that the man was still breathing had let them disembark without gunfire, but otherwise he was certain he’d never met a more useless human._ _

__The messenger gestured uphill to a metal statue, some sort of lumpy, moving modern art thing that was too tall to be human, and announced, “The King of Canada.” Bass and his soldiers formed a defensive triangle and scanned the crowd, each man searching for someone skilled and arrogant enough to declare himself a king and get away with it. Slowly they realized the shiny thing at the top of the stairs was the king._ _

__“Get up here you old bastard!” the king called._ _

__Bass stalked up the stairs. The voice was familiar, but it couldn’t possibly be who he thought it was. Still who else could it be? “Jeremy?” Bass asked. He wondered if this was madness. If he’d already lost Charlie and his mind was taking him away from a reality too painful to bear and off to a time before she’d fully tilted his world off its axis._ _

__The giant enveloped him in a hug and Bass felt the links of the chainmail pinch his skin as he was drawn against the metal wall of the man’s chest. “Jeremy?” he asked again. The stench of spilled beer and last night’s pizza hit Bass’ nose and he was finally sure. It really was Jeremy. This time his voice was barely a whisper. “I was wrong. I’m so sorry.”_ _

__“You really are better, huh?” The voice that said it was full of genuine awe and joy. “The girls said you were, but pretty girls have always been a little dumb for you. Did you really knock up little Matheson?”_ _

__“How?” Bass asked._ _

__“Everyone knew you weren’t doing so well towards the end of the Monroe Republic. The guards were all with me. Hell,” he laughed, “Those guards are all here.” Jeremy dropped his arms and stepped out of the hug. “Promise me you won’t kill anyone.”_ _

__Bass knew his idiot friend was making a face under the hacksawed bucket he was using as a helmet._ _

__“You did kidnap my wife,” Bass said._ _

__“No. I sent a guy to bring home my daughter because she refused to believe I was alive. Charlie saw them snatching Jess and jumped in the boat. She jumps pretty well for a preggo.”_ _

__Bass let out a small laugh at that - knowing both Jeremy and Charlie the scene was entirely believable - and pulled his friend back into a hug. Part of him wanted to race to Charlie and part of him feared the future; hugging Jeremy seemed like a good alternative to moving._ _

__Jeremy patted his back, the links of the chainmail jingling as his massive arm swung. “Let’s get you to her.” Jeremy studied his old friend. “She’s doing well,” he said. “She’s young and strong and her mom has pushed out three kids. She’s going to be OK.”_ _

__“You don’t know that.”_ _

__Seriously Jeremy said, “You’ll leave here as a family or you won’t leave.”_ _

__Bass held steady, taking in what Jeremy had said and what he hadn’t. He knew. He’d been through the good and the bad with Bass for more than a decade. He wouldn’t let the bad happen again. Even if it all went wrong, even if Charlie died and Bass fell to crap, Jeremy wouldn’t let his worst self loose on the world again. Bass nodded and asked, “You think you can hold me?”_ _

__“I think you want to be held.” A moment passed, and then Jeremy led the way into one of the houses. It was even nicer than the mansion Bass had claimed in the cove. Jeremy moved past the curved marble staircase to the second floor and towards the back of the house, and Bass quickly followed, entering a master bedroom with a private porch. Just off the porch, a large kettle boiled. A low, steady moan came from behind a door at the back of the room. Bass’ stomach clenched. He’d been here before._ _

__Jeremy handed him a plastic bag full of wet, blue and white cloth. “Put it on,” he ordered._ _

__“You’re saying I’m not well dressed enough for the birth of my child? Have you taken a good look at your own soldiers?”_ _

__Jeremy chuckled. “It’s been boiled and sterilized. Also, it’s lighter weight than what you’re wearing. Don’t want you to drown.”_ _

__“Drown?”_ _

__“They’re doing a water birth. The old hot tub in the bathroom is lined with a sterilized tarp and filled with sterilized water.”_ _

__“Seriously?”_ _

__Jeremy nodded and clapped a still armored hand on his friend’s shoulder. “This isn’t a field hospital in year two. This is the palace of the King of Canada. We have all the knowledge of the old world and a lot of experience making it work it the new.” A sharp cry came from behind the door. “Get changed before you miss everything.”_ _

__Bass stripped. Screw it. Maybe it was all a trick, but if he had to put on a boiled Hanes v-neck and soggy scrub pants to get to his wife then so be it. He’d rather be armed when he went in there, but from the sound of things he was going to have to bide his time anyway. She wasn’t running anywhere immediately. “Guard the door,” he ordered his men._ _

__Jeremy gestured to the porch door and said to Bass’ men. “Run in pots of water from the kettle outside if he says she’s getting cold. That’s how they’re keeping the tub warm.” With that, Jeremey walked to the porch, withdrew a bottle from a cooler just outside the door, and popped the cap using an opener tied to the cooler with a string. He waggled the bottle at Bass. “If you want one later, help yourself. We’ve got a pretty good brewery.”_ _

__Bass laughed. Of course Jeremy had a good brewery. Of course his soldiers looked like walking piles of laundry. And of course he’d declared himself king. He’d always refused any promotion beyond Captain. He’d claimed once you were a Major, things were expected of you that didn’t suit his vision of a life well-lived. King would be the next rank where you could easily deal with problems and acceptably live up to low expectations. It suited him._ _

__He opened the white, panelled door to the bathroom and found Charlie in the bathtub, her arms spread across the back of it, while Jess read a book across the room by the light filtering through a tinted and textured window. He watched as Charlie’s chest and shoulders slowly moved with each deep inhale and exhale. When finally her head slowly turned to him, she lifted a hand and reached out towards him. He quickly crossed the room and took it, pulling her head against his chest and babbling a string of soothing words promising it would all be OK, vengeance would be theirs, he came just like he said he would._ _

__Charlie cut him off. “I love you, baby, but you can be quiet or you can leave.”_ _

__For two more hours, Bass followed Charlie’s orders, moving the tarp to let some water drain when she requested it and adding more to warm it up. He held her glass while she sipped water and held her hand while she squeezed. He’d have sworn she was trying to break every bone he had, but he had better sense than to complain. He did ask at one point if she shouldn’t be lying down and Jessica gave him a lecture on gravity, positioning and trusting the body. It sounded like a bunch of hippy bullshit, but she had more successful births to her credit than he did and Charlie was happier than he’d expected her to be._ _

__Eventually Jess moved closer and there was a brief debate on logistics, who Charlie wanted in and out of the tub, which was cut short by Charlie’s order for everyone to shut the hell up. Jess whispered in his ear, “When you see the baby underwater, pick it up and get it out of the water. It will be slippery. Support the head.”_ _

__Bass looked at her like she was mad - they really thought his kid was some kind of amphibian - but baptism didn’t kill you and he felt sure he could snatch up his baby a lot faster than you could wash of sin. “OK.”_ _

__Twenty minutes later, Bass was shaking hard as he held his son, still attached by the umbilical cord to Charlie. “You want him?” he asked her as he gave up his fight against tears. She nodded and Bass passed the child over, shocked by how empty his arms suddenly felt. He wrapped them around Charlie to try to fill the loss and realized he was going to have to find new normals yet again. He was going to have to find a way not to hold both of them all the time._ _

___________________________ _

__

__Later, with mother and child safely and dryly tucked into bed to rest, Bass helped himself to a beer. It wasn’t his usual drink, but he was finally a dad in the most traditional way and dads drank beer. It was slightly warm and a lot bitter and reminded him of parties in the woods in high school. He set it down and stared at the stars instead. His son deserved better than a dad who drank because it was what other people did. His son deserved a dad who did what he knew was right._ _

__For three years now, Bass had loved Charlie. He’d tried hard to live up to her standards of morality and compassion, even when his own instincts were darker. He’d tried to trust her to always be there for him like he knew he’d always be there for her. The baby made everything deeper and better, including Bass._ _

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for being so nice to me on the other piece! This is my thank you. Comments welcome.


End file.
